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Google AdWhirl: When one door closes another one opens

In t-minus 3 months Google will be shutting down their popular ad mediation platform, AdWhirl. While some developers are up in arms over the short notice, its exit leaves a business opportunity.

AdWhirl is a service that allows its users to run banners from multiple ad networks across their apps. For many developers this is a large source of revenue and AdWhirl has even claimed some developers have earned $1000/day. The service had launched in April of 2009 and originally had connections to Jumptap and Moblix. It was then bought by AdMob which was then acquired by Google.

There are mixed emotions about what this means for developers. Some are perturbed at the abruptness of the service’s ending. As Mad Rabbit developer Vinh Nguyen put it “We developers understand that [AdWhirl] might be discontinued in the future, but terminating this in three months is just too fast for us to migrate…" Others are less concerned, and feel that they will simply shift their business over to AdMob Mediation. App developer Gavin Bowman even stated that this termination of AdWhirl was “[expected] to happen eventually.”

Despite the discrepancies in opinion, one thing is true, this creates opportunity. Users won’t be forced to move to AdMob which means other ad mediation platforms like Bustly, MoPub and Smaato can move in. Also Google is leaving the open source code available, allowing anyone to create their own version of AdWhirl.

As the app market has become more complex and sophisticated, ad mediation platforms need to as well. The closing of AdWhirl, while frustrating and even disheartening to some, is a great opportunity to further the app market.